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  • Feast: Disney+ Talk

    Feast: Disney+ Talk

    One of my favourite Disney short films is ‘Feast’. It was released in 2014, and accompanied ‘Big Hero 6’ during its theatrical run, and has just been added to Disney+. ‘Feast’ is a 6-minute short, telling the story of a human through the eyes of his adopted Bull Terrier and the meals the dog is given. 

    I am definitely a ‘dog person’; I own two dogs and love them very much, so the way the narrative is structured is not only unique, but adorable and innocent. Dogs are curious creatures by nature, so this helps carry the story.

    By choosing to tell the story through the eyes of Winston, the dog, it gives us subtle hints to what is happening to the owner in his life: junk food gets replaced by salads and fancy foods as he goes on dates with a woman, to then change back to takeaways as the woman breaks up with the owner. It’s a different approach to storytelling and is a delightful watch; just don’t watch this when you’re hungry!

    The overall short has a soft look to it, thanks to the animation style, symbolizing the softness and innocence of Winston and this works beautifully. This, and the editing are the main reasons why this is my favourite short.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=qbAYLAbhyxc

    The way that the shots flow seamlessly together makes this short not only satisfying to watch but interesting too. 

    Overall, ‘Feast’ is a delight to watch. It tells a simple story through a unique, and innocent, perspective, making this a one-of-a-kind short film. If you have not seen this, I would recommend watching this. 

  • Lake Michigan Monster: Director Ryland Brickson Cole Tews

    Lake Michigan Monster: Director Ryland Brickson Cole Tews

    Lake Michigan Monster is a strange beast. Not the beast itself (sightings unconfirmed), but the film from writer, director and star Ryland Brickson Cole Tews. Lake Michigan Monster is a combination of black and white monster movie pastiche, George Méliès fever dream and a Monty Python sketch that just keeps going and going. I was lucky enough to get a chance to interview the man behind the madness of Lake Michigan Monster and this is what happened.

    So, how did you come up with the idea for Lake Michigan Monster?

    I was sitting on Wine Rock along the shores of Lake Michigan listening to pirate metal with Erick West (Sean Shaughnessy). It was raining and we were smoking Djarum Black Clove Cigarettes and drinking $3 sweet red wine. I turned to my companion and said, “What if a mermaid washed up on shore and we were the only ones around to see it?”

    Did you always intend to direct the film? How did that opportunity come about?

    Of course. No one else would be foolish enough to attempt such an inexplicable act.

    Who or what are your influences when it comes to film and comedy?

    Well for this picture, Guy Maddin, Monty Python, The ‘Burbs, early Sam Raimi, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Yentl.

    What made you decide on the visual style for Lake Michigan Monster?

    Necessity. All we had was an old barnacle-ridden camera and our wits. And then of course once Magic Mike Cheslik got involved, we really wanted to make this thing look like it was dug up out of the Earth. The reason was simply to stand out from the other 6 billion movies made every year.

    How would you describe your sense of humour?

    Hit and miss.

    What are your favourite monster movies?

    Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The Troll Market scene had a profound impact on me. And by profound, I mean, you know, it was tight.

    What directors or writers inspire you to make films?

    Japanese filmmakers inspire with their tireless work ethic. Guillermo del Toro with his imagination. Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell because they grew up in Michigan and also made crazy small budget movies. And of course, Sylvester Stallone and Jackie Chan — writers, directors, actors, ATHLETES.

    What’s your favourite urban monster myth?

    If D.B. Cooper was a werewolf. But since he probably wasn’t, I’ll go with Mothman.

    What’s your great white whale? What’s the one thing that seems out of reach that you want to achieve in your life?

    Actually, I hope to one day slay a whale myself. Preferably an endangered one. (Edit – he’s kidding, definitely kidding)

    What are you doing next? It’s an uncertain time right now, but if you can tell me anything you’ve got lined up then please do.

    The new picture is a supernatural, no dialogue, physical comedy set during the height of America’s fur trade. The name of the movie is HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS.

  • An American Pickle: The BRWC Review

    An American Pickle: The BRWC Review

    A struggling laborer named Herschel Greenbaum (Seth Rogen) immigrates to America in 1919 with dreams of building a better life for his beloved family. One day, while working at his factory job, he falls into a vat of pickles and is brined for 100 years. The brine preserves him perfectly and when he emerges in present-day Brooklyn, he finds that he hasn’t aged a day. But when he seeks out his family, he is troubled to learn that his only surviving relative is his great-grandson, Ben Greenbaum (also played by Rogen), a mild-mannered computer coder whom Herschel can’t even begin to understand.

    An American Pickle is a movie that caught my attention the moment I saw a commercial for it while watching television the other night. Up until that commercial aired, I had not heard a single thing about it which surprised me because I am genuinely a fan of Rogen’s work. Yes, he has had his fair share of duds over the years, but the same can be said about a lot of actors.

    While it’s definitely not without its missteps, Brandon Trost’s An American Pickle is a fascinatingly strange movie that you just can’t help but appreciate. It’s not one of the best movies of the year or anything – not even close – but it is most certainly one of the strangest and most ambitious so far.

    Apparently Rogen had the idea for this film as far back as 2007 but wasn’t able to get it made until now and I’m glad he finally did. This movie was quite entertaining from beginning to end even if it didn’t have a ton of meat on the script. Like with most movies, I didn’t go into An American Pickle knowing anything about it as I only saw that one commercial. I literally just knew it was a new Seth Rogen movie and that was it, and I’m glad I went in as blind as I did.

    A large majority of this story plays out like some sort of weird, trippy episode of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm or something. It has that sort of sitcom-esque feel but not in a bad way. It was actually kind of fascinating to see the story of a man who was alive one-hundred years ago suddenly wake up in present-day America after being preserved for such a long time and have to adapt to modern life.

    We see him do things like dance to music for the first time in a century, we see him get his mind blown by how easy it is to make a cup of coffee nowadays. He is absolutely shocked to hear about something called a taxi and has to learn how it operates and what it does. Have we seen this done before? Sure. But the way Trost approaches this story was fresh and funny. On top of all of this, Rogen is just great in the film as well. I was truly stunned to see how well he managed to pull off two completely different performances and was quite happy to see how much he committed to each of them.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBC0pTh6GDM

    One of the strongest aspects of the film is the dynamic between Rogen’s two characters Herschel and Ben. Herschel is absolutely the definition of an old-timer, for obvious reasons. Ben is a computer programmer who has spent the past five years working on a product called Boop Bop which rates companies on ethics. It doesn’t take long at all for the two of them to realize that they have nothing in common which is when the arguing and fights start to happen. The duality and polar-opposite characters of Ben and Herschel actually made for some of the most interesting and entertaining characters of the year so far. It was deeply funny to see how these men had to deal with one another during one scene and then the next.

    If I had to pinpoint the biggest problem with An American Pickle, it would have to be that the film never really fully commits to its outlandish concept. What I mean is that screenwriter Simon Rich doesn’t go nearly as deep into this story as he could have. There are a lot of wild things that happen throughout the course of the film, but sadly, we don’t really get a lot of insight into them. One moment, in particular, shows a group of citizens incredibly angry at Herschel and it’s supposed to be a sad scene where the audience is supposed to feel extremely bad for him. The problem is that we never see how it affects Herschel himself. He just kind of eats up all the complaints and moves on.

    There are a lot of themes that the film tries to tackle and it doesn’t really do any of them justice. At least, not one-hundred percent. It makes attempts at touching on capitalism, cancel culture, and religious values but doesn’t go deep enough. It’s all relatively surface-level stuff which was quite disappointing to see. Had this film went for it and actually told a compelling story with layers, this might have been one of the best and most surprising movies of the year. But what we got is a funny and entertaining movie with not a lot of substance or messages to take away from it. With some movies, that’s okay. An American Pickle is one of those movies. It’s funny and shockingly fun to watch, but just know that this isn’t going to be a heavily deep experience.

    An American Pickle may not delve deep enough into its great concept or themes, but it makes up for it with an amazingly funny dual Seth Rogen performance.

  • Pearl: Review

    Pearl: Review

    Pearl (Larsen Thompson) lives with her mother, Eve (Sarah Carter) and step-father, Anthony (Nestor Carbonell). Then out of the blue one day, Anthony takes a rifle and shoots her mother, Helen and then himself. Now an orphan, Pearl only has her grandmother, Eve (Barbara Williams) to turn to, but Eve has problems with alcohol which leaves Pearl without many options.

    Pearl’s only hope is to turn to family friends, but through a little digging the family lawyer finds one of Helen’s ex-boyfriends, Jack Wolf (Anthony LaPaglia) who may also be her real father.

    Jack is a suicidal artist with a possible drinking problem, but with very little options, Pearl moves in with the man who may be her real father. Pearl’s exclusive private school has also turned their back on her. Considering the trauma that she has gone through it’s decided that Pearl will have to go to a regular high school.

    Luckily that’s where Pearl meets Sylvia (Melissa Macedo) and they soon hit it off and form an unlikely bond despite Sylvia knowing the extent of Pearl’s privilege. Sylvia also meets a dashing young man named Zack (Nighttrain Schickele) and as their romance blossoms, life starts to get better and she finds that a new life may not be all that bad.

    Pearl is a movie with a ‘made for TV’ quality that was lucky enough to get a digital and Laemmle Virtual Cinema release. Directed and written by Bobby Roth who’s best known for directing episodes of television’s best-known shows, it seems that on this occasion Roth is out of touch with his chosen subject.

    There’s no character development whatsoever, no connection or chemistry among its cast and characters have massive mood swings which make no sense within the relationships they’ve already established, seemingly only done to move the plot along. Even if that means leaving plot threads open.

    There are so many things shoved into the plot that they have little time to breathe, whereas the movie could have been served better concentrating on one or two things (Pearl’s real parentage and the trauma of losing her mother for example). However, Pearl makes no attempt at what could have been an emotional, albeit predictable drama leaving it feeling uninspired.

  • Host: The BRWC Review

    Host: The BRWC Review

    Tapping into the limitless potential of cyber technology, several modern horror films have embraced our new tech wave with inventive results. Efforts like Unfriended and Searching have glued audiences into the normalized view of computer screens, utilizing our habitual web searches as a canvas for lurking scares to be unleashed. While those films showed promise in their experimental nature, Shudder’s latest horror film Host is the first offering to mine potent scares from its lo-fi premise.

    Set during the current COVID-19 pandemic, Host follows six friends who decide to bond by performing a seance over Zoom. What was supposed to be an adventurous journey turns sinister when one of the friends tells a fake story about a dead acquaintance, which births an unknown entity that wreaks havoc on the call.

    Director Rob Savage accomplishes an impressive feat with his minimalist, made in quarantine horror outing. The amount of preparation to make this production run smoothly was exhaustive (Savage had to coordinate the scares from afar while teaching his cast a variety of stunt techniques), yet none of those challenges appear in the final product. The naturalism Savage creates is an essential asset to the atmosphere built here, grounding his narrative in our current zeitgeist with a seamless effect. The dialogue flows naturally without feeling overwritten, while the unheralded cast offers convincing performances as an accustomed group of friends.

    Host succeeds most at delivering the unpretentious thrills that horror fans crave. A truncated 56 minute run time allows for the director to trim the fat and focus on developing a sense of unease from the jump, building a lingering sense of dread that bursts once the set pieces are released. Utilizing a refreshing amount of ingenious practical effects, the scares land with stellar results. Savage’s mixture of creative design work and pertinent timing allows these frames to hit with more impact than most mainstream horror outings, displaying the makeshift spirit that makes the genre so beloved.

    Host does a lot to impress, yet it’s clear there’s still some room for refinement. Gemma Hurley, Jed Shepard, and Savage’s screenplay sticks to horror conventions with their supernatural premise, never discovering a fresh direction to take the narrative in. What the film misses deeply is a substantive core, lacking a level of depth that would have made the uneasy horror moments resonate on a grander level (the current-day setting seems like a missed opportunity). Given the circumstances though, it’s an achievement to create a fully-formed film, let alone one with Host’s level of craftsmanship.

    Delivering a mixture of creativity and ingenuity to the horror genre, Host marks a promising debut from director Ron Savage.